Same old story...

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves,  says Labour is cutting NHS waiting lists, the cost of living and government debt while boosting productivity, investment and growth. But this week’s budget contained few surprises with spending plans that had largely already been floated in the media by Starmer aides eager to prepare the public for a mediocre financial review that does next to  nothing to end austerity or reverse the decline in the living standards of working people. 
Sure there were some sweeteners in the Reeves budget like the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap. The state pension will rise by 4.8 percent – £440 a year – and by £575 for people on the newer pension scheme.  And the national living wage and national minimum wage will also be increased.
Starmer & Co call on everyone “to make a contribution” to protect public services and help people struggling with the cost of living. But in reality workers will continue to bear the burden of the capitalist crisis in higher taxes and further cuts to what’s left of the public services.

A step too far...

“Trial by jury is a cornerstone of our democracy and an essential safeguard against authoritarianism “ says Jeremy Corbyn. “It is truly frightening that such a fundamental freedom is now under attack. Once rights are lost, they are not easy to win back. We must resist this with all we’ve got”. 
But, incredible it as it may seems,  the Starmer Government is indeed thinking of scrapping jury trials in England and Wales for all but the most serious of cases. Starmer’s deputy, the Justice Minister David Lammy,  is proposing to massively restrict the ancient right to a jury trial by only guaranteeing it for defendants facing rape, murder, manslaughter or other cases passing a public interest test.
The plans, obtained by BBC News, are allegedly an attempt to end unprecedented delays and backlogs in the courts. But juries are founded on the principle of a fair hearing and a trial of one’s peers. They are considered by many, including legal professionals, to be the cornerstone of our criminal justice system. Judges and barristers have joined in the chorus of opposition to this attack on jury trials forcing Lammy to think again.  He now says that “no final decision” had been made amid rumours of a U-turn in favour of  more modest plans for jury-less super-magistrate courts to hear to cases likely to receive a maximum sentence of three years that was originally floated in the independent review by Sir Brian Leveson. 
Abolishing jury trials would clearly dismantle a core constitutional safeguard that has existed for more than eight centuries. It is the first step towards a police-state. But, at the moment,   it also seems to be a step too far for the bourgeoisie as whole to take if the response of the legal community is anything to go by. 

Football crazy, football mad

 The police move to stop fans of Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv from attending the Europa League match against Aston Villa in Birmingham next month was a prudent and wise decision. Sir Keir Starmer’s attempts to reverse the decision were foolish and shameful. 

Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana were right to criticise Lisa Nandy and Starmer for their disgusting attempt to link the ban on racist hooligans to anti- semitism. Their Independent Alliance bloc in parliament says Nandy. the Culture & Sports Minister, should resign.

 "Lisa Nandy’s grossly misleading comments have served as the basis for appalling accusations about the motivations of those who support this ban.

 "The government has taken an issue of public safety and distorted the facts for political ends – and it has been caught out.

 "This is about a group of fans with a history of racism and violence. This is not about banning Jewish people. The attempt to conflate the two is a shameful attempt to exploit the fear and anxieties of Jewish communities".

 Starmer’s pathetic efforts have now been rendered meaningless by the Maccabi club which said this week that it wasn’t going to sell tickets to the match to their fans, even if the decision was overturned because a “toxic atmosphere' had been created around the fixture through 'hate-filled falsehoods'. 

But the truth is Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have had a long history of violence and anti-Arab racism. On the day of the match with Ajax in Amsterdam last year their fans rampaged through the Dutch capital attacking anyone they thought looked like a Muslim or a Palestinian supporter before fleeing when enraged Ajax fans and passers-by took to the streets to drive them out of town.

 After the match, which Ajax won five-nil, the Zionist lie-machine went into top gear to portray the riots as a pogrom while reactionary Dutch leaders and a host of other European politicians joined in the chorus of bourgeois outrage at what they called a “Jew hunt” led by the “anti-semitic gangs” of Amsterdam. They said the violence was an attack on Jews but no such attacks were reported against the local Jewish community. And in the following days the “pogrom” narrative fell apart as more details and witness accounts surfaced. 

In 2023 in Cyprus, Maccabi supporters were arrested for possession of flares and smoke bombs. Others engaged in fights with local residents. In Athens in March 2024, Maccabi fans beat up a man carrying a Palestinian flag ahead of the game with Olympiacos. And only last week a local derby between Maccabi and Hapoel Tel Aviv was cancelled after what the Israeli police described as "public disorder and violent riots" which led to 12 people and three police officers being injured.

 The decision of the Birmingham authorities to ban the Maccabi fans on safety grounds has been welcomed by many. But some say it doesn’t go far enough. Palestine solidarity campaigners say that the game should be abandoned altogether because Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Others say that Israeli football teams, which are not even located in Europe, should be banned by UEFA from all competitions. We agree.

 Allowing Israeli football teams to compete in international competitions allows Israel to cynically present itself as a normal country, obscuring the truth of its oppression of Palestinians. 

Israel's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has killed many tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including many hundreds of Palestinian footballers. It has destroyed Gaza's football stadiums, training grounds and pitches. 

The Israel Football Association directly participates in Israel's crimes against Palestinians. It governs football clubs based in illegal Israeli settlements on stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians, facing down Israel's military assaults and ethnic cleansing, have long demanded that Israel is banned from international sporting and cultural bodies as a means of holding it accountable for its crimes, just as apartheid South Africa was. 

We agree!

What choice do we have?

Starmer squirms while Gaza burns. He warns MPs that the Middle East is “close to the brink” and in “very real danger of a regional war”  but refuses to rule out British military involvement if Israel attacks Iran. He declines to say whether MPs would get a vote first on any military action. Why is that?
The obvious answer is that Starmer is waiting to see what the United States wants and at the moment the White House is keeping its cards close to its chest. At the moment we can only second guess what the Americans will do though Biden’s 30 minute telephone call to Netanyahu doesn’t bode well for the future of Lebanon. What is however certainly clear is that whatever Biden wants Starmer will do.
This is what the “special relationship” is all about – doing the bidding of the Americans and those sections of the British ruling class who believe that their global interests are best served through the might of US imperialism. Crawling to the Americans comes as second nature to right-wing Labour leaders who never seriously challenged imperialism when the British empire spanned the globe,
Starmer & Co stand for little apart from personal ambition and slavish support for American imperialism and what they believe to be the dominant section of the British ruling class. Sadly they face no serious challenge, at the moment, from within the labour movement. Labour’s army of local government jobsworths and the legion of trade union bureaucrats that run the big unions and the TUC have been easily bought off by the very modest package of reforms promised by the new government. Like Starmer and the ageing Blairites now back at the helm of the Labour Party the grandees think they can safely ignore the mass movement on the street in support of the Palestinians.
We must prove them wrong. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marched through the heart of London last weekend demanding justice for the Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands more are taking part in anti-war protests throughout the country. As Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who now heads the Independent group in Parliament said “without further de-escalation, unimaginable horror is on the horizon. But as we stand on the brink of a major regional war, do not forget those who lie dead in its wake. Do not forget what has been taken from us, forever. Do not forget the people of Gaza, where genocide continues unabated.
“We continue to march because we refuse to let the memory of Palestinians die. We continue to call for an end to all arms sales to Israel. We continue to speak up for the only path to a just and lasting peace: an end to the occupation of Palestine. After a year of genocide, we might ask ourselves why we bother to carry on when our demands have largely fallen on deaf ears. As long as there are Palestinians who dream of freedom, what choice do we have?”.

Round four in the election stakes

We’re passed the half-way mark in the election race. The mainstream party leaders stomp the streets to confine the debate to which one of them is better at administering the bourgeois state that the ruling class themselves pay so little to maintain while on the fringe the left-social democratic outsiders scrabble for a protest vote that has failed to take the discussion beyond the parameters set by the ruling class on NATO, Trident, Israel and the European Union.
The one exception is in London where Jeremy Corbyn is battling to keep his Islington seat in the face of a strong challenge from the official Labour candidate. The former Labour leader  has published his own manifesto calling for energy, water, rail and mail to be brought back into public control, as well as for a Green New Deal to put Britain on the path towards a sustainable future.
Corbyn may be the odds-on favourite with the bookies to keep his seat in July but he’s still five points behind Labour in his constituency. This week the chair of the Islington North Labour Party resigned after being seen campaigning on the street for Corbyn.
Though the vast majority of voters who will be siding with Labour at the general election say Jeremy Corbyn should be readmitted to the party and he has the support of most of his old constituency party this will all be rendered meaningless if he loses his seat to a Starmer stooge. 
Though well to the left of anything Starmer’s got to offer Corbyn’s left social democratic programme is, indeed, thin gruel. It doesn’t call for the complete restoration of the public sector and the mixed economy that existed when Labour was at the helm in the 1970s or for the total repeal of the Tory labour laws that have hamstrung free collective bargaining since 1979. But a Corbyn victory will be a defeat for Starmer & Co.  It will enable Corbyn to continue to expose and oppose the worst aspects of Starmerism in parliament and provide a focus for the left-social democratic opposition within the Parliamentary Labour Party. And, of course, it will mean that the people of Islington will continue to get the support and assistance of a dedicated representative who has served the locality for over 40 years. 
The NCP’s electoral policy is to vote Labour. This is not because we support the venal right‑wing policies of Starmer & Co or because we think a future Labour government can solve the problems of working people. It is simply the best possible outcome under the current circumstances. We will, however, support independent left Labour activists who have mass support, even when they come into electoral conflict with the Labour leadership. It is part of our struggle for a democratic Labour Party. We supported Ken Livingstone when he ran, and won, the London Mayoralty and we support the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn in Islington.

Where are we going?

Labour looks set to win the next general election. If the vote was held now the fifteen to twenty points lead in the opinion polls would give Starmer a landslide victory of Blairite proportions. But the polls can be misleading.
    Sunak is undoubtedly in trouble. He’s failed to win back the so-called “middle Englanders” who abandoned the Tories when the economy nearly collapsed under Liz Truss. Sunak’s failed to appease the Tory bigots over the refugee crisis who are now turning to the “PopCons” – the ‘Popular Conservative’ Trussite faction in parliament or the Faragist Reform Party.
    Only time will tell whether the appeal of the “Popcons” or the “Reformers” will split the Tory vote. Sunak’s team hopes not. Some think they can still rally the Tory faithful. This, of course, may just be wishful thinking. But it’s interesting to note the air of caution coming from one of the leading Blairites this week.
    Peter Mandelson, a Blairite grandee, says people “are not pricing in sufficiently” the possibility of Labour failing to win a majority. Labour’s poll lead is “artificial” and “is going to contract”. A landslide is not a foregone conclusion and if Labour fails to maintain its current momentum, it is on course for “a somewhat more ambivalent result than than the opinion polls are currently suggesting”.
    That’s certainly true. Starmer has hounded out most of the Corbynistas that the party relied on to do the canvassing needed to get the Labour vote out while promising little or nothing to the millions of working people whose votes will decide the next election. Starmer & Co may well believe that crawling to big business, media barons and the Americans is the key to victory – but it means nothing to the workers who will only rally round Labour if there’s real reform on the agenda.
    We reject the “parliamentary road” and electoral politics. But the left social-democrats who call themselves “revolutionaries” aren’t the answer. They claim to be the alternative voice of the labour movement. But their slates will end up, as always, amongst the also-rans at election time. The same goes for George Galloway and his new “Workers Party of Britain”. Though he bucked the system in the past, returning to parliament on two occasions on his Respect platform, he achieved nothing.
    These posers call for social‑democratic reforms while campaigning against the only mass force capable of implementing reform, the Labour Party itself. The paltry results of all these parties reflect the futility of trying to compete with Labour in bourgeois elections.
    They foster the illusion that there is a left electoral alternative to Labour when the reality is that the only alternative — in the current situation — to a Conservative government is a Labour government. So they end up portraying Labour rather than the ruling class as the main enemy of the working class. Objectively they end up in the camp of the class enemy.
    A Labour government, with its links with the unions and the co‑operative movement, offers the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Our strategy is for working class unity and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right‑wing within the movement and strengthening the left and progressive forces within the Labour Party and the unions.
    We must demand that the Labour Party reflect the wishes of the millions of its affiliated union members, expressed through the unions’ democratic procedures. And the unions we must struggle to elect genuine working class leaderships, who are prepared to represent and fight for the membership.
    The Party must campaign for a democratic Labour Party controlled by its affiliates; a Labour Party whose policies reflect those of a democratic union movement would become a powerful instrument for progressive reforms that would strengthen organised labour and benefit the working class.
    Our Party’s strategy is the only way to fight for the communist alternative within the working class of England, Scotland and Wales. We want day‑to‑day reforms and they can only be achieved by the main reformist, social democratic party in Britain, the Labour Party. We want revolution and that can only be achieved through the leadership of the communist party.

One door opens…

None of us should be surprised at Sir Keir Starmer’s victory in the Labour Party leadership contest. The darling of the Blairites was backed to the hilt by the right-wing Labour factions that operate within the party and the trade union movement. But his convincing first-round victory over the supposed heir to the Corbyn mantle showed that his support went far beyond that of the Labour’s traditional right-wing constituency.

It’s also true that the number of abstentions outweighed those that actually voted for the ambitious lawyer turned politician who now leads the Labour Party. But the fact that Starmer bagged 275,780 votes in the poll – more than that of the two other hopefuls combined – shows that tens of thousands of Labour members who had previously backed Jeremy Corbyn had been swayed to vote for the “unity” candidate this time round.

Some are now, once again, calling for the establishment of a new socialist party to challenge Labour. None of them can explain why all previous attempts to do so have failed dismally. Others, ready to rebuild the left inside Labour, have not looked frankly at their own record over the last five years and are, therefore, doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

Although Corbyn’s campaigns sparked off a surge of support that has made the Labour Party one of the largest political parties in Europe, they failed to build a mass left social-democratic base within it. His core support in parliament went little beyond the old Bennite Socialist Campaign Group. The tens of thousands who rallied to Corbyn’s banner showed no interest in the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) that Corbyn led. Although there was some mass support for Momentum when it was founded, that rapidly evaporated when it became clear that it was just an ego-trip for a tiny clique that revolved around one of Corbyn’s useless advisers.

Starmer is a good communicator whose 10-point programme embraced much of Corbyn’s old agenda. This includes support for the common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water, as well as an end to outsourcing in the NHS, local government and justice system.

He also pledged to “work shoulder to shoulder with trade unions to stand up for working people, tackle insecure work and low pay and repeal the Trade Union Act,” although he’s avoided any commitment to reverse the tranche of anti-union laws passed by successive Tory governments since 1979 and to restore free collective bargaining in full.

Many can easily be forgiven for thinking that Starmer’s agenda is, indeed, a continuation of the Corbyn project. But it isn’t.

If Starmer talks about “common ownership” of the railways and the utilities it’s because it’s popular on the street and there’s now a bourgeois consensus in favour of restoring part of the old public sector. No-one is going to argue about more support for the health service these days whilst even some sections of the ruling class are resigned to accepting a modest increase in income tax at the highest levels.

Although we get the usual platitudes on climate change, peace and human rights, Starmer’s camp is totally committed to retaining the colossally expensive Trident nuclear missile system to maintain Britain’s bogus independent nuclear deterrent, which in practice is just an appendage of US imperialism’s nuclear arsenal.

Corbyn won the Labour leadership contest in 2015 with mass support. It showed Labour was still a potentially strong weapon for our class. That is not to confuse the Labour Party with a revolutionary party or imagine that we can gain a workers’ state through parliamentary elections.

A Labour government, with the yet unbroken links with the trade unions, offers the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Our strategy is for working class unity, and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right-wing within the movement and strengthening the left and progressive forces within the Labour Party and the unions. We support those in the Labour Party fighting for left policies. It is part of our struggle for a democratic Labour Party.

Still on Track

Labour has opened up a four-point lead on the Conservatives in the latest opinion poll. This is despite the backstabbing of the Blairite fifth column who are working with the Zionist lobby and the rest of the bourgeois media to topple Jeremy Corbyn before the next election.

            A Survation poll puts Labour at 41 per cent, up from 40 per cent in July, and the Tories down one per cent to 37. UKIP are running neck and neck with the Liberal Democrats on six per cent while opinion was equally divided over whether to leave or remain in the European Union.

            What it shows is that the anti-Corbyn hate campaign has had no impact amongst the public –  apart from some of  Corbyn’s closest advisers who seem to believe that the best form of defence is retreat.

            The surrender to the Zionist camp over the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-semitism, which could easily be used to stifle all meaningful support for the Palestinian people, was endorsed by Jon Lansman, the Momentum chief who is seen as the éminence grise of the Corbyn campaign.

            Some say that appeasement will end the endless internal rows and enable the Corbyn leadership to concentrate its fire on the Tories in the run-up to Brexit and the next election. But there was no reason to back down in the first place. The Blairites and Zionists are paper tigers. They represent no-one but themselves.

            Labour is ahead in the polls and it will win the next election if it sticks to its guns and pledges to honour the Brexit vote, end the austerity regime and implement the working class agenda that the unions and the masses are demanding.

           

 Off the rails

THE DEMAND for Britain’s railways to be taken back into public ownership reached a crescendo last month with passenger complaints over shoddy services and soaring prices peaking over the collapse of the Virgin Trains East Coast franchise and the  recent rail timetabling chaos concerning Northern Rail, Southern and Thameslink services. They have, once again, highlighted the shambles of our privatised rail network. But what is the Tory government’s response to the public outcry?

            Yet another “independent” review into rail franchising that has been rendered meaningless from the start because the Government has ruled out any restoration of  public ownership of the railways.

            Mick Cash, the leader of the RMT rail union says: "You don't need a body scanner to work out that this is just a transparent attempt by the Tories to try and kick the privatised chaos on Britain's train franchises into the long grass for a year. It won't work as it's clearly a desperate stunt by a Government clutching at straws which is ideologically opposed to the British people owning and running their railways.

            “The only solution to the current rail franchise shambles is an end to private greed and a return to public ownership. RMT will be stepping up the fight to kick the spivs off the tracks, the strategy for the future supported by 70 per cent of the British people. "

The privatisation and de-regulation of public transport has been a disaster. It has shattered the national rail network into lots of little bits and pieces, put bus services into the hands of numerous rival companies -- all jostling with each other for the lucrative routes -- and made it nigh on impossible to plan or integrate transport services locally and nationally.

Labour has pledged to return the railways to public ownership. Speed the day by campaigning to bring the May government down to force an election and the return of a Corbyn-led Labour government that will restore the public sector that we once enjoyed.